Working WiTH Secondary SourceS
AP® Short Answer Questionsinternational and grassroots Progressivism
To what extent did the Progressive era owe its origins to an increasingly global society?
Although the United States began its economic growth in a developing global market, it
also began to see itself through the lens of other developed nations and their approaches
toward social politics.
The origins of reform in the first half of the twentieth century remain ambiguous.
The Progressive era represented a grassroots approach to the fulfillment of the inalien-
able rights of the Declaration of Independence. But what other factors encouraged the
legislative leaders to formalize such movements, with attention to the Seventeenth and
Nineteenth Amendments (election of senators and women’s right to vote, respectively)?
You have already read various sources that illustrate different interpretations about
the origins of reforms during this time period. Now read the two passages below, and
consider the factors that promulgated reform during this time period.The years between 1900 and 1920 marked the maturation of the political culture
of middle-class women. Able to vote in only a few states before 1910, excluded
by law from public office in most states, and perceived as outsiders by lawmakers
in Congress, and in state and municipal governments, women had to find ways
to overcome these gender-specific “disabilities” if they were to affect public pol-
icy. They did so by drawing on the most fundamental and enduring features of
women’s political culture—the strength of its grass-roots organizations, and the
power of its moral vision.
Structured representationally, women’s organizations, even those with strong
national leaders like the National Consumers’ League, gave great weight to the
views of state and local affiliates. This sparked grass-roots initiative. It also fostered
belief in democratic processes and the capacity of large social organizations—like
state and federal governments—to respond positively to social needs. Whereas
the predominant moral vision of men’s political culture tended to regard the state
as a potential enemy of human liberty, the moral vision of women’s political culture
viewed the state as a potential guarantor of social rights....
— From “the historical Foundations of Women’s power in the Creation of the ameri-
can Welfare State, 1880–1920,” in Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, eds., Mothers of a
New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States (new York: rout-
ledge, 1993), 68.By the first decade of the twentieth century there was no party system within the
North Atlantic economy that had not been profoundly shaken by the new social
politics. In Britain, the Liberal government of 1906–1914 embarked on a flurry of
legislation that, a quarter century later, still stuck in Franklin Roosevelt’s mind for
its daring. For the aged poor, it inaugurated an old-age pension system borrowed
from New Zealand; for the crippling economic effects of sickness, a program of
compulsory wage-earners’ health insurance borrowed from Germany; for the
most exploited of workers, a set of Australian-style wage boards empowered to
establish legal minimum wages; for the sake of fiscal justice, progressive land andWorking with Secondary Sources 425PeRIoD seven
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